Gorgias and Rhetoric (Focus Philosophical Library) by Plato & Aristotle

Author:Plato & Aristotle
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Published: 2012-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

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1 Literally an antistrophe, a stanza in a choral ode chanted in the same metric pattern as the preceding stanza, and danced in the same steps, but in the opposite right or left direction across the stage. Dialectic is understood by Aristotle to be the study of rigorous reasoning that begins from starting points not evident in their own right, but widely accepted on the basis of popular or authoritative opinions (Topics 100a 30-b 24). Aristotle’s choice of the word antistrophos here echoes 464B-465D of the Gorgias, where Socrates calls rhetoric a counterpart for the soul of what cooking tasty food does for the body.

2 The word is theôrein; see 1355b 25 and footnote.

3 Handbooks giving instructions for making speeches in court were common in Aristotle’s time. Aristotle is using the word “art” in the plural as a name for such books. Below, he coins the verb technologein, “make a speech-art,” first used at 1354b 17, for what their writers do.

4 The word enthumêma refers to anything with a connection of thought in it. Aristotle calls it a “rhetorical syllogism” (1356b 4-5). In the formal logic of our time, a syllogism is any set of two premises and a conclusion, and an enthymeme is a syllogism with one premise left out. Aristotle confines the word syllogism to arguments in which the premises are evident in their own right, or are consequences of other such premises, and uses the word enthymeme instead when any of the premises are merely probable, or only signs of other things.

5 The word here is dikastês. In Athens, a large panel of ordinary citizens was chosen to decide each case as both jury and judge.

6 The Athenian court that tried those accused of murder, and a few other serious crimes.

7 The verb is deiknumi. Aristotle singles out deixis, argument from evidence, as the proper function of rhetoric. This falls short of strict and conclusive demonstrative reasoning, apodeixis, but goes beyond the mere arousal of passion or prejudice.

8 The following sentence shows that the things similar to truth Aristotle has in mind are accepted opinions (endoxa). Hence he is not speaking of deceptive or illusory appearances of truth, but of beliefs which hold the same rank among things subject only to opinion that truth holds among things subject to demonstration and knowledge.

9 Reading autôn as in the manuscripts rather than the editorial emendation hautôn in Ross’s text, and understanding “they” as the things that are true and just and “them” as their opposites. The standard condemnation made of the sophists (see Gorgias 520A and footnote), and not of rhetoricians, was that they made the weaker speech or argument the stronger. In Aristophanes’ Clouds, a father wants Socrates to teach his son how to make the weaker speech, which can overturn the stronger by arguing in favor of unjust things (882-884).

10 At 101a 31-34.

11 The word is theôrein, “beholding,” used by Aristotle for contemplative thinking, and for the power of recognizing things not resting on reasoning but from which reasoning must begin.

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